Facebook's smart glasses: what you need to know
Yahoo Finance's Dan Howley joins the Yahoo Finance Live panel to discuss the latest
Video transcript
ZACK GUZMAN: In this week's Tech Support, we are seeing a tech giant go where other tech giants have failed, as Facebook looks to roll out their smart glasses in the wake of failed attempts from both Snap and Google. So for more on why this time might be different, happy to welcome in Yahoo Finance's Tech Editor, Dan Howley, who-- I don't know. Are those are the ones?
DAN HOWLEY: These are them, right? They look like regular sunglasses. These are the Ray Ban Stories. They're $299. There's a conspicuously-- a conspicuous, rather, absence of Facebook branding on the glasses themselves. But don't be fooled, these are Facebook glasses, because it's connected to a Facebook app that you will need to download to use the glasses and get your photos.
But there's a lot of caveats with what's shared and what's not. And Facebook and Ray-Ban kind of go out of their way to make sure that you know that photos you take are completely protected, stored on the device. They don't look at what's in the photos or the videos. What they ask if you would like to opt into is how often you use the sunglasses, how many photos you take, things like that. But it's not something you have to share.
So there's that. It doesn't connect to the Facebook app directly, you know, the proper Facebook app. It connects only to the Ray-Ban Facebook app itself. You can then choose to send out photos and videos directly to those Facebook apps, or Instagram, or even third party apps. So it really is kind of this weird in-between, where they're making sure the privacy is there.
But then the glasses themselves, let's talk about, and the privacy issues there. So they look like regular Ray-Bans, right? They don't look any different. There's two five-megapixel cameras on either side. And what they do is they create a wide, kind of almost panoramic image when you capture them. So I'm going to take a picture right now. And you'll be able to see the light light up right here. So here we go. I don't know if you got to see that, the little flash?
ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah.
DAN HOWLEY: You can also shoot video if you press it quickly. Right now I'm recording a 30-second video. You can stop doing that. It's got speakers built in so you can listen to music from them. It's kind of loud, so I was listening to some DMX, because that's how I roll, and my friend was able to hear it standing right next to me. So it's not exactly private, so if you're having phone calls or things like that. There is also a touchpad to turn the volume up and down.
But I think the big question here is, are people going to buy it, $299? You know, they are Ray-Bans, and when the battery dies, they should last about six hours. 500 photos can be taken before the storage is filled up. So there's a good amount of use out of them. And once they're dead, they're decent sunglasses because they're Ray-Bans.
I don't know if people will spill $299 on them. The other thing is, we were just talking about this before we got on, the privacy implications. So there's just that little flash when I take a photo. That's all you get. There's an audible notification that you'll hear when you're taking them. But some people have shown that you can just cover up the little flash, and then people won't even know that you're taking anything.
So I think there's a lot to discuss there as far as the privacy. That was something that came out with Google Glass. Are you recording people? People were able to turn off the lights themselves on Google Glass. I think these are interesting. They're fun. They're functional, because they are sunglasses. You don't look like a spaz, like you would if you're wearing spectacles, which are just absolutely wild looking.
Someone said that they were basically Burning Man glasses, which I mean, yeah, they essentially are. These are just regular sunglasses. So I do find it interesting. I'm not going to buy them, just because I don't understand the necessity of it. I do recognize that it does allow you to stay in the moment when you're taking photos, instead of picking up your phone and looking through your viewfinder, or at the screen, rather than what's actually happening in front of you.
You can capture everything just by going like this. But $299, I can just enjoy life with a regular pair of sunglasses that I bought at Rite Aid or something for $5 and still get the same kind of appeal. So these are them. They are interesting. And I just want to know if you guys were able to see that little flash.
- I was able to see the flash. And you almost had me sold, until you said you could also hide the flash, which is kind of a scary thing. But I may be outing my habits right now, shopping habits, Dan, but $299 for sunglasses doesn't seem that pricey for me, because Ray-Bans are already well over $100. You got some tech integrated into the sunglasses. Who knows? Maybe some people will go for it.
